A Slice of the World is Enough

or:

Experiencing the Fujifilm TX-1 (aka Japanese XPan)

When we look through the viewfinder of a camera, we see a framed part of the world. For most photographers, this frame has a 3:2 side aspect ratio, and they must tilt the camera to go from a horizontal ("landscape") to a vertical ("portrait") layout. When using my Nikons, I always look at my target two ways: horizontal and vertical, and shoot when I believe the format to be right. For many MF photographers, including myself shooting Hasselblad, the frame to our photographic eye is a square. But although I see a square frame in my viewfinder, only 5 percent of my pictures are printed as a square; for about 90 percent of my other pictures I know at the time I click the shutter whether I will print horizontal or vertical images; i.e., I see myself cropping the image in at least one dimension. However, in the other ten percent of my shots I end up printing other than what I had thought when shooting, or even both ways. The large image area of the square MF format allows me to shoot first and decide later what the final image should look like.

Taken with Hasselblad 503CX and Zeiss Sonnar SA 5,6/250mm

But, for a photography freak like yours truly, one camera is not enough. For quite a while, I have been fascinated by panoramic images; particularly landscape shots, and I have even produced an extreme panoramic landscape in the Austrian alps with a long lens (250) on my Hasselblad, where I knew at the time I took it that it would be cropped dramatically. When I found a cheap panoramic camera, a Horizon 202, I bought it to see if I could work with it. (You can read my report on this camera here.) My conclusion was: Yes, I want to shoot panoramic images, but not with the shortcomings of a rotating lens system. With another photographic purchase planned in the more distant future, a rangefinder camera, I sort of decided to eventually buy the Hasselblad XPan and get two systems in one camera.

An often repeated statement on in various sources for panoramic cameras is "some landscapes (such as the South-Western US) lend themselves to panoramic photography". Since I had a trip to exactly this corner of the world planned for March, 2002, I decided to buy a panoramic camera in time to take on the trip, along with my standard Hasselblad gear. While I shopped the web to find a reasonably priced XPan, or even a used one, I came across the Fujifilm TX-1, which is almost* identical to the Hasselblad XPan. Both are made by Fuji, but while the TX-1 is sold only in Japan, the XPan is sold in the rest of the world - at a higher price. Ebay made it possible for me to locate and purchase a TX-1 set through a "camerafriend" in Japan. (Thanks, Lim!)

However, while the camera was on its way to Europe, the trip to the US became questionable, and had to be cancelled eventually. So when the TX-1 gear arrived in Vienna, I held in hand "the ideal camera" for a place I would not be going to in the near future. But holding the camera and looking through the viewfinder made it quite clear to me that I wanted to use this camera. It feels great, is relatively light weight (if you are used to dragging 20+ pounds of camera gear), and the rangefinder window reminded me of "my" first camera, my father's Agfa Carat 4. I started to take the camera with the 30mm lens everywhere I went in my hometown, Vienna.

This camera changed my perspective of the town. At first, it felt useless. The wide aspect ration of 2,7:1 does not naturally "lend itself" to architecture photography, and also street photography did not seem too inviting when I looked through the wide window of the camera's viewfinder. Being used to "seeing square", the wide range of this camera seemed to crop too much on the top and the bottom, and holding the camera vertically always gave me too narrow a view. I shot a few panoramas around Ringstraße, as I had done with the Horizon before, but was not too convinced. However, after carrying the camera around for a few days, after looking through the viewfinder dozens of times and giving up on the shot just because the image did not seem complete, I started to wonder if I should not just take a few shots of objects without any panoramic quality, anyway. I was strolling through MuQua, Vienna's most recent addidtion to our cultural heritage. I looked through the viewfinder and found that with the mix of old and new architecture, sometimes the parts missed in the viewfinder were actually quite missable. So I started to move around and check what I cropped with the same care as I checked what I actually saw in the viewfinder. Within a few minutes, I had shot a roll of film, and another. Then I went back the following day, and while my lab processed the films of yesterday, I shot a couple more. The results surprised me. I had learned in a very short time that in a (panoramic) picture, what is left out matters just as much as what remains in.

The square format I am used to is extremely versatile and useful. As said above, it gives me the option to shoot a vertical or horizontal image in one frame; i.e., it allows me to shoot first and think later just how the final image will be. The 2,7:1 image is not at all so giving! Which means I have to know for every frame that what I shoot will be it - no way to rethink at home, when the film is back from the lab and is being scanned into the computer.

The trick to panoramic photography for "non-panoramic" targets is to crop what we consider a normal image as we shoot, or, if you wish, "slice" a slim image out of a square/rectangular/round reality while pressing the shutter. I have convinced myself I am no longer taking panoramic pictures, but slicing panoramas out of a non-panoramic world.

* Almost identical: The major difference is optics: The Fujifilm isn't black, but features a metal titanium tyle finish, which even I who hardly ever wears anything but black or gray think makes this particular camera much prettier. The only technical difference is the viewfinder for the 30mm lens, which does not have the offset of the XPan's viewfinder, but mounts straight above the hot shoe and thus straight above the lens. As it does not have the automatic parallax control of the cameras viewfinder, I find this a bonus, as parallax error occurs but one way (down). As a Hasselblad photographer, I was not surprised to find the external 30mm viewinder to show the full frame of the lens in the full frame of the viewfinder (just like the 903 SWC's viefinder); the frame one sees in the viewfinder is much less than the actual image. E.g., I took the below shot of Viennas Burgtheater from the very spot where the left and right ends of the building touched the frame in the 30mm viewfinder (approx. the brighter area of the image below). See how much more I got on the image? The final image is slightly less than what the entire viewfinder showed.

Taken with TX-1 and Fujinon 5,6/30mm lens with center filter at f-8, automatic exposure.

I do not know if it is the same for the XPan's 30mm viewfinder, but I guess it is.

February 2003, © Günter K. Haika